To Hull and back

How did Humberside young guns the Paddingtons become Dior's favourite band? By Andrew Perry

Thanks to the exploits of Kate Moss and Pete Doherty, it looks as if these days fashion and rock and roll make perfectly debauched bedfellows.

Behind that lurid public saga, however, a more mutually beneficial partnership is unfolding, whereby young bands are gaining their vital career leg-up from fashion designers, rather than the usual channels of radio airplay, or a timely interview in the music press.

Indeed, while the New Musical Express has been remarkably slow on the uptake, one of Britain's brightest and most energetic young rock bands, the Paddingtons, have gained an unlikely endorsement from within the higher echelons of fashion house Christian Dior.

When I travel to Paris to meet the band, who are from Hull, their spirits are high, despite a sleepless overnight drive from their hometown. No sooner have we shaken hands than the quintet, all barely in their twenties, are mobbed by giggling French girls. An hour or so later, we're being wined and dined in a nearby Japanese restaurant by Hedi Slimane, Dior's leading young designer. Slimane, it transpires, is a keen aficionado of Britain's current rock scene.

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"He'd been looking at Pete Doherty and loads of bands," explains the Paddingtons' chief songwriter and bassist, Lloyd Dobbs. Disbelievingly, he tugs at the collar of his old Harrington jacket. "His whole collection was basically inspired by bands like us."

"He rang me a few months ago," adds their equally bemused singer, Tom Atkin, "and said, 'I want you to do the catwalk for Christian Dior'. I'd been up for three nights, so I just hung up and went back to sleep. Then I woke up, and I thought, 'Oh God, he might've actually been for real'."

Talking to them, it strikes me as highly improbable that the Paddingtons have been monitoring such sartorial developments as "the return of the waist" at London Fashion Week. After we leave the restaurant, Slimane photographs the five of them cavorting through the backstreets of Montmartre. Between snaps, he excitedly tells me how their last gig in Paris coincided - uncoincidentally - with his birthday. Champagne flowed freely all night, by all accounts, and the Paddingtons' name duly landed in the gossip columns, as Doherty and Moss showed up, early in their affair.

These associations could easily damage the Paddingtons' credibility in rock circles. When I first saw them perform in London, guests included Neil Tennant from the Pet Shop Boys and 'It' Girl Tamara Beckwith - not regular faces at the dingy Water Rats club in King's Cross. Their daft name, and an even sillier public feud with Liam Gallagher, would provide further grounds for scepticism, were the Paddingtons not the truly excellent band that they are.

With Libertines wannabe's currently proliferating around the country, this bunch of outsiders from the unfashionable North East of England stand apart. Their debut album, First Comes First, released next month on Alan McGee's Poptones label, was produced by Owen Morris, the man who put a similar swagger and punch into Oasis's Definitely Maybe. Like that classic debut, almost every track is a possible hit.

"There's only so many ways you can do rock and roll," says Dobbs with a shrug. "We try and write pop songs. They're all about us lads in Hull. Well, it's me and my bird, mostly - or my ex-bird. Teenage heartbreak. It's just obvious stuff, isn't it?"

Neither such reductive rhetoric, nor their punky sound, can mask the quality of the Paddingtons' songs. Two gems from the album Panic Attack, and the exhilarating 50 To A £, have already crashed into the Top 30. Another, called Sorry, should follow suit in a week or two. Gutsy, chaotic and almost over-burdened with great tunes, they have also blazed a trail across Britain's live scene, notching up more than a hundred shows this year.

Such drilling is palpable when they blast through their late-night set at Paris's Triptyque club. It's a sweaty and breathlessly exciting performance. Thereafter, the band's trusty Transit van turns back for a month-long tour of the UK, and the Paddingtons will continue to prove that there's content behind their couture.